here’s my hbd day essay that appeared on olave’s hbdday.com site yesterday:

Altruism and Human Biodiversity

Human biodiversity comes in all shapes and sizes. There are average physical differences between various human populations, average intellectual differences, average behavioral differences. In addition to all of these, there are differences between human populations in certain social behaviors such as the types of altruistic behaviors displayed (reciprocal altruism versus what I will call “familial altruism”), nepotism and corruption. These social behaviors all relate to a biological concept known as inclusive fitness.

Evolution is, of course, all about the survival of the fittest, or those individuals who, via reproduction, pass on the most copies of their genes into the succeeding generation. However, according to the concept of inclusive fitness, an individual can also increase his fitness not only by reproducing, but also by helping others with whom he shares genes to successfully reproduce as well. The other people with whom individuals usually share the most number of genes are their family members, so by helping out nieces and nephews for example, a person can increase his own fitness since he shares a good deal of his genes with these relatives.

In his now classic article, “Cousin Marriage Conundrum,” Steve Sailer pointed out how the concept of inclusive fitness explains why some populations with high degrees of inbreeding, such as Arab and South Asian societies, exhibit greater amounts of nepotism and corruption than Western societies. This is because the inclusive fitness payoff described above is greater for inbred groups than outbred groups. As he put it, in inbred populations:

“[Y]ou’ll be genealogically related to your kin via multiple pathways. You will all be genetically more similar, so your normal family feelings will be multiplied. For example, your son-in-law might be also be the nephew you’ve cherished since his childhood, so you can lavish all the nepotistic altruism on him that in an outbred family would be split between your son-in-law and your nephew.

“Unfortunately, nepotism is usually a zero sum game, so the flip side of being materially nicer toward your relatives would be that you’d have less resources left with which to be civil, or even just fair, toward non-kin. So, nepotistic corruption is rampant in countries such as Iraq….”

I like to think of these sorts of altruistic behaviors that are directed towards family members, such as nepotistic behaviors, as “familial altruism.” An alternative form of altruism, which is often directed towards non-family members, is reciprocal altruism in which an individual is altruistic towards another individual in the hopes that the favor will be returned at some later point. Both forms of altruism are undoubtedly found in all human populations everywhere, but familial altruism occurs more frequently in inbred populations due to the greater inclusive fitness payoff, probably at the expense of reciprocal altruism.

In addition to explaining why some groups of people are more nepotistic than others, inclusive fitness also helps us to understand the evolution of these behaviors in humans (and other animals). Significant amounts of inbreeding in a population over numerous generations can lead to increased frequencies of those genes that are related to familial altruistic behaviors, whatever they may be. If inbred individuals are more successful at passing their genes on than non-inbred individuals because they are naturally more inclined to practice familial altruism, then, thanks to natural selection, “genes for familial altruism” will gradually spread through the population (see also here). In contrast, such genes will hardly spread at all through an outbreeding population since the inclusive fitness payoff to be extra altruistic towards family members isn’t so great in these populations.

What does any of this have to do with the real world as we know it?

Well, not only do different human populations today inbreed or outbreed to differing degrees as Steve Sailer alluded to in “Cousin Marriage Conundrum,” but different human populations have different histories of inbreeding and outbreeding; histories during which various frequencies of different types of genes (alleles) related to altruistic behaviors might have been selected for.

For instance, the Arabs have been regularly and frequently marrying their first-cousins since well before Muhammad’s time, probably since the time of Christ or even before. Arabs, with their tribalistic societies, exhibit some of the greatest amounts of familial altruism of any human population on the planet. Society operates almost exclusively around the extended-family, the clan and the tribe; nepotism and corruption are the norm; and liberal democracy, which is based on individual freedoms and rights, is difficult if not impossible to implement in these societies.

The Arab form of cousin marriage, what is known as father’s brother’s daughter marriage, spread to the populations of the Maghreb, the Mashriq and parts of South Asia during the Middle Ages, and today these other societies behave tribally just as the Arabs do. Father’s brother’s daughter marriage is almost exclusive to this part of the world. It is the most incestuous of the cousin marriage forms since both mother and father come from the same (paternal) lineage.

The most common form of cousin marriage in the world is mother’s brother’s daughter marriage and it has a very long history in China going back to at least the third century B.C. This form of cousin marriage involves less inbreeding than the Arab type since parents come from different lineages, but it is still a form of inbreeding. That the relatedness of family members in Chinese populations is not as close as in the Arab world is reflected in the shape of Chinese society versus Arab society: the extended family and the clan is important, but society is not fractured along tribal lines. Nepotism and corruption are still rampant, however, and again liberal democracy is difficult to implement. The influence of familial altruism is still too strong in Chinese society.

Due to an historical accident, namely the introduction of Christianity, the one area of the world in which human populations have been outbreeding for a significant amount of time is Europe, more specifically Western Europe, and even more specifically Northwestern Europe. Starting as early as the fourth century A.D., the Roman Catholic Church banned cousin marriage in Europe (and civil codes often backed up these bans). Which cousins you could or could not marry according to the Catholic Church, and later the Eastern Orthodox and Protestant churches, has varied over the centuries; but from the 1200s through the 1800s, marriage up to third cousins was forbidden in the Catholic Church (although dispensations have been available to different degrees at varying times).

In other words, for a good 800 to 1600 years, Europeans have not been inbreeding. The conditions which, as described above, can promote the spread of familial altruism genes in a population were removed from European populations. Not surprisingly, European societies today are not tribalistic and very few are clan-based or even centered around the extended family. European societies, especially Northwestern European societies, are founded upon the individual and the nuclear family. Nepotism and corruption are much less frequent. It was here that liberal democracy, based on the rights and obligations of individuals in reciprocally altruistic relationships to one another, was born.

There are some exceptions to the historic pattern of European outbreeding. The periphery of Europe held on to inbreeding practices for much longer than “core” Europe, core Europe being the English, the French, the Germans, the North Italians and possibly the Scandinavians.

Working counter-clockwise around the periphery of Europe, the following populations continued inbreeding, to different degrees and for different lengths of time, beyond the Early Medieval period, sometimes well beyond, unlike core Europeans: the Irish, the Spanish, Southern Italians, the Greeks, the Poles, the Russians and Eastern Europeans in general. Most of these societies still place emphasis on the extended family rather than the individual and the nuclear family; most have relatively high levels of corruption and nepostism and clientelism; and many have shaky democratic systems. It’s probably no coincidence that Europe’s P.I.I.G.S. are found in this group of historic inbreeders. Again, familial altruism still reigns supreme in these populations, although to a lesser degree than in the Arab world.

How can this information be of any use to us? Like any knowledge grounded in human biodiveristy, we can come to understand that all human populations are, on average, not indentical in nature. It is very likely that populations with long histories of inbreeding have greater frequencies of whatever genes are related to familial altruism; and because of these innate differences, it would be very difficult to get any of these populations, the inbred ones or the outbred ones, to change their average altruistic behavioral patterns overnight.

The Arab Spring will never look like the American Revolution and produce liberal democratic societies because Arab populations are too innately tribal. Their tendency toward familial altruism affects their thoughts and feelings on how to interact with others on an everyday basis. It is sheer folly to insist on “bringing democracy” to these populations, and frankly it is insulting to them to insist that they adopt our ways when they think and feel very differently about the right ways that family- and non-family relationships should work.

The European Union is also doomed to failure because it is an attempt to unite individualistic outbreeders with more family-oriented (recent or current) inbreeders. The combination will never work because, again, the innate attitudes of the people in each of the populations are too different. The one side operates as a group of “atomized” individuals collectively working towards “the common good;” the other is still too focused on “me and mine.”

Finally, the implications of the effects of long-term inbreeding on altruistic behaviors for the immigration policies of Western societies are enormous. To allow the mass immigration of peoples with very different historic mating patterns to Western nations is simply a recipe for disaster. The outcome, at least in the short term, will very much resemble a mixture of oil and water: the two simply will not blend since their compositions are too dissimilar.

Human biodiversity – it matters!

(note: comments do not require an email. more gummy men! and a ‘shopped gummy woman.)

Excellent essay and really concise sum-up of the inbreeding question and its real-world effects. One question I find interesting is the correlation between inbreeding and societal outcomes. For example, on this map we see lots of poorer / less functional countries with high consanguinity, but by no means all (although much of SS Africa & SE Asia = no data). The eastern Slavic countries stand out, as does Latin America (as places with low inbreeding but middlingly high levels of dysfunction).

I just wonder what factors intermix with in/outbreeding to create those outcomes. I know IQ is a popular one these days (‘IQ and the Wealth of Nations’ etc.), but I’m thinking more like character traits (future orientation, industriousness, etc.). Can outbred populations with low future orientation, for example, create the same type of low-trust high-corruption societies that inbreeding gets you? Or the Ashkenazi Jews, to take a counter-example. If Harpending and Cochran are right, can inbreeding push ‘positive’ traits to the fore (high ‘g’ for example, or industriousness) and allow a society of such people to be high-functioning, even if they’re inbred? (I don’t know if Israel is considered high-trust, but it’s certainly first-world by any standards.)

This place where inbreeding and character traits meet really fascinates me.

@m.g. – “For example, on this map we see lots of poorer / less functional countries with high consanguinity, but by no means all (although much of SS Africa & SE Asia = no data). The eastern Slavic countries stand out, as does Latin America (as places with low inbreeding but middlingly high levels of dysfunction).”

the consang.net map is great, but it has a BIG drawback and that is that it has no time depth. the data reflected on the map, for the most part, is contemporary — where are there consanguineous marriages today (or, maybe, back to the ’80s and in some cases back to the ’60s). it totally misses out the centuries of inbreeding/endogamous matings in eastern europe and latin america and china, so in many ways, for my purposes anyway, it’s not very helpful.

@m.g. – “If Harpending and Cochran are right, can inbreeding push ‘positive’ traits to the fore (high ‘g’ for example, or industriousness) and allow a society of such people to be high-functioning, even if they’re inbred?”

i think so! i mean, that’s the whole point of thoroughbred breeding practices after all. i’ve had this idea for a post for a while now but i haven’t really figured out what to say: “inbreeding vigor.” (~_^) (as opposed to “hybrid vigor,” that is.) there’s no such thing, really … but there sorta is in a way … if positive traits are selected anyway.

@m.g. – “This place where inbreeding and character traits meet really fascinates me.”

me, too! one thing i keep thinking of is that, if you have a clannish or a tribal society (caused by inbreeding), it’s probably more likely that, for example, lower iq and/or slackers could be carried forward by the group. if you are an independent individual, you’ve gotta be an independent individual who can make his way in the world and reproduce successfully — mostly on your own (and with a little help from your friends, perhaps). if you’re not very bright and/or not very hard working or not very future oriented, but you have a lot of family around who love you to death (’cause they share lots of genes with you), they’ll probably help you out quite a bit. you might even be able to reproduce sucessfully, and pass on those low-iq/slacker genes — whereas someone like that in an independent individualistic society will likely not.

in other words, clans/tribal groups act like sort of mini-welfare states. and we know what happens there if those dreaded eugenic practices are left out (e.g. not insisting that welfare moms shouldn’t keep having babies when they’re on welfare).

I’m from Russia, and as far as I know interbreeding has always been quite low. Of course, it may be a stereotype, but it is widely believed that the bride and the groom never came from the same village. If a guy wanted to marry, he had to go to the neighboring villages. And with transportation becoming more available, marriages between people coming from very distant cities became common. I think that in the USSR people had a thing about finding a future spouse while traveling, at least it was like that in my family, and everyone comes from far away.

But in reality, relatives are still very important, although quite less nowadays. They are the people who help you in a difficult minute. If you have problems, you should go to your relatives. My grandmother stayed in contact with her extremely distant relatives, unimaginably distant. Even I know quite well my third cousins, and maybe even further.

Traditionally, your relatives and your native village were extremely important in Russia, and there was a sense of collectivism, partly destroyed by communism first, and now by our new rulers. I think it originated from extreme poverty of the majority of population before communists and from the harsh climate because people were not sure they would be able to provide food for themselves.

I think that even now many people feel that they ought to help their nephews, nieces and sometimes even simply acquaintances to find a job, but nobody can be sure nowadays to be repaid later for that. The system is dying.

@uncertainty – hi, uncertainty! thanks for your comments. all of what you had to say was very interesting!

@uncertainty – “But in reality, relatives are still very important, although quite less nowadays. They are the people who help you in a difficult minute. If you have problems, you should go to your relatives.”

well, that’s exactly how “clannish” peoples are, in many parts of the world. and it makes sense to a lot of people — who else can you trust — or who can you trust the most — if not family members?

@uncertainty – “My grandmother stayed in contact with her extremely distant relatives, unimaginably distant. Even I know quite well my third cousins, and maybe even further.”

cool! i just want to check with you, though — when you said third cousins, do you mean these people? sometimes people refer to cousins differently when they speak in layman’s english rather than how the anthropologists/biologists use the words. a lot of people i know, for instance, say “second cousin” when they’re talking about “first cousins-once-removed” — so i just want to check with you what you mean by third cousins. thanks!

that’s very cool if you keep track of your third cousins, btw! i know about half of my second cousins, and i know who the other half are, but i’ve never met them.

@uncertainty – Traditionally, your relatives and your native village were extremely important in Russia, and there was a sense of collectivism, partly destroyed by communism first, and now by our new rulers. I think it originated from extreme poverty of the majority of population before communists and from the harsh climate because people were not sure they would be able to provide food for themselves.”

the tough climate could very well have had something to do with it.

@uncertainty – “I’m from Russia, and as far as I know interbreeding has always been quite low.”

cool! i just want to check with you, though — when you said third cousins, do you mean these people?
hmmm I think you are right! Not that distant! I’d rather say I know my second cousins and second cousins once removed.

Actually, as far as marriages between the relatives are concerned and their genetic influence, one has to distinguish between a tendency and an accident. If there is a tendency, it is very likely that there is a document that states directly “marry your cousins” or a document that states “never marry your cousin because it’s a great sin and your children are going to be ugly and stupid’ due to the plurality of opinions that nearly always exists, and the less popular opinion has to have more argumentation and is unlikely to be expressed in a law.

In the sources you use it is mentioned that it is prohibited to marry somebody from your clan. To me it sounds like “don’t marry your paternal relatives. Don’t marry your maternal relatives if you know that you are relatives”. I think if the family tended to live with the paternal relatives (and if the tradition of taking a bride from another village is quite old) the chances are that the children actually knew few of their maternal relatives and it was one of the causes of marriage between cousins.

Marriages for reuniting the inheritance don’t seem to have prevailed because few people owned land.

Therefore, I am not sure that even though this kind of marriages took place, it happened often enough to enhance the selection of “corruption” genes.

And what do you think of ‘mir’ being one of the possible reasons of too close ties among people that resulted in less caring about yourself, no caring about the others and as a result a higher level of corruption? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obshchina
Of course this unity is quite older than Wikipedia mentions (I’ll need to do a research on this topic when I have more free time), and actually the Russian word for ‘world’ actually comes from that word (it’s alwo ‘mir’)

@uncertainty – “one has to distinguish between a tendency and an accident.”

absolutely.

@uncertainty – “If there is a tendency, it is very likely that there is a document that states directly ‘marry your cousins’ or a document that states ‘never marry your cousin because it’s a great sin and your children are going to be ugly and stupid'”

actually, the pattern that i think i’ve noticed so far — and i could be wrong — is that peoples who have a tendency or regular practice to marry cousins don’t really mention it very much — ’cause it’s such the ordinary thing to do. it’s the regular practice, so why even bring it up? it’s the practices that are prohibited that are usually mentioned all over the place — like father’s brother’s daughter (fbd) marriage in traditional china — a big no-no — and so it was written — over and over again!

i think you see this in the words that peoples have for cousins, too. in western europe, there’s generally only one word for “cousin” (sometimes maybe two, distinguishing gender), i think because ALL cousins are off-limits to marry. in other societies where certain cousin marriage is allowed/preferred, the different cousins are named specifically — so, in arabic, all four types of cousins are named, with the fbd being the favored one to marry. in chinese, again, all four types (iirc) have specific names, with the mother’s brother’s daughter (mbd) having been the favored cousin to marry — and the fbd very much frowned upon.

meanwhile, amongst the yanomamo, the word for “wife” and the word for “female cross-cousin” is one and the same, because of course you marry your female cross-cousin (specifically your mbd).

@uncertainty – “In the sources you use it is mentioned that it is prohibited to marry somebody from your clan. To me it sounds like ‘don’t marry your paternal relatives. Don’t marry your maternal relatives if you know that you are relatives’.

i took it to mean just don’t marry your paternal relatives since the “clans” (or extended families, i guess) were very much patrilineally based, but you could be right. i also was drawing on what i’ve read about cousin-marriage practices in other parts of eastern europe — like the balkans, for instance, where paternal cousin marriage is very much forbidden (and way out to a very distant degree, too), but maternal cousin marriage is ok and even encouraged in some places. russians are not southern slavs like some of the balkans populations, obviously, but there might be a general eastern european tendency. also, maternal cousin marriage is the most common form in the world, so it wouldn’t be surprising to find it in russia, too — if it did, indeed, happen there.

@uncertainty – “I think if the family tended to live with the paternal relatives (and if the tradition of taking a bride from another village is quite old) the chances are that the children actually knew few of their maternal relatives and it was one of the causes of marriage between cousins.”

@uncertainty – “And what do you think of ‘mir’ being one of the possible reasons of too close ties among people that resulted in less caring about yourself, no caring about the others and as a result a higher level of corruption?”

well, my working theory (which could be wrong!) is that these village-level cooperatives are often simply sets of inter-connected (inter-related) extended families/clans, and that the whole system is rooted in the close marriage system. you get clans, tribes, sippes, derbfines, the fis, and even mirs, because of close matings. these are all just collectives of closely related individuals — extra closely related because there’s been some degree or another of long-term, regular inbreeding in these populations.

“in other societies where certain cousin marriage is allowed/preferred, the different cousins are named specifically — so, in arabic, all four types of cousins are named, with the fbd being the favored one to marry. in chinese, again, all four types (iirc) have specific names, with the mother’s brother’s daughter (mbd) having been the favored cousin to marry — and the fbd very much frowned upon.”

In Russian female cousins are called “sister”, and for a male cousin it is “brother”, and there is an adjective describing the degree of kinship. Nowadays the equivalence of the “second cousin” that is the most distant among the degrees that are used in everyday life, although there is nearly no such limit. Seven or ten generations look like the magic number as there is something like a proverb – the seventh (tenth) water in the kissel – which means that there is hardly any kinship between somebody. Colloquially, cousins are referred as “brothers” and “sisters” without mentioning their degree of kinship, and there children are referred as “nephews” and “nieces”, although there are more specific words. Cousins’ parents are usually called “uncles” and “aunts” no matter how distant relatives they are, and grandparents’ siblings and cousins are likely to be called “grandfathers” and “grandmothers” (actually, in English it sounds strange because these words contain the words ‘mother’ and ‘father’, but in Russian it is not the case). Of course, only if their age is the same. Nobody would call a person of your own age “aunt”, she is more likely to be referred to as “sister”.
Therefore, I think that our language is quite much against marriages of relatives, although it looks like distant relation can be sometimes disregarded (as words describing distant cousins are falling out of use now).

” i also was drawing on what i’ve read about cousin-marriage practices in other parts of eastern europe — like the balkans, for instance, where paternal cousin marriage is very much forbidden (and way out to a very distant degree, too), but maternal cousin marriage is ok and even encouraged in some places.”

The Balkans are related closely to the Muslims, particularly to Turkey in their culture. I think that their traditions are quite distinct from all other Eastern Europe. Moreover, they are separated from us by non-Slavic countries, and as a result there is no continuity between us as far as the territory is concerned, whereas there really is no linguistic or cultural borderlines among the Western Slavs and the Eastern Slavs.

” you get clans, tribes, sippes, derbfines, the fis, and even mirs, because of close matings. these are all just collectives of closely related individuals — extra closely related because there’s been some degree or another of long-term, regular inbreeding in these populations.”
It seems to me that in Russia the situation was different. As I have already mentioned, it was traditional to marry people from other villages. Perhaps it was due to the fact that your own village was regarded as your kin?

@uncertainty – “In Russian female cousins are called ‘sister’, and for a male cousin it is ‘brother’, and there is an adjective describing the degree of kinship…. Therefore, I think that our language is quite much against marriages of relatives….”

thanks for all the info on russian kinship names! very useful. (^_^)

yes, it absolutely sounds like the russian kinship terms reflect an aversion to cousin marriage. which shouldn’t be too surprising since the eastern orthodox church, like the roman catholic church (and later some of the protestant churches) in western europe, did place various bans on cousin marriage (although later than the western churches, afaik).

the question is: for how long have the russian kinship terms been structured like this? does it go way, way back, or has there been a shift (or even shifts) in the terminology at any point(s)?

in the germanic languages (and other western european languages at various times) there was a shift from the “specific” cousin terminology (i.e. naming each specific cousin a different name) to a more “general” cousin terminology (i.e. all cousins are just “cousin”) beginning in the 1100s (see second half of this post).

now, cousin marriage began to be banned amongst the germanics in the early medieval period — as early as the 400 and 500s in some places, but definitely by the 800s in most germanic areas. so it seems as though there was a “lag-time” of a few hundred years before the language caught up with the actual marriage practices (the development of the marriage practices also probably took some time — the shift away from cousin marriage was probably a gradual thing).

i’ve only taken a brief look at the medieval mating patterns in russia — i need to learn a lot, lot more about what happened marriage-wise during that period and subsequently in russia — but a couple of things do stand out:

– russians didn’t convert to christianity until the late 900s, so it’s likely that that puts russians several hundred years behind in avoiding cousin marriage as compared to western europeans;
– between ca. 1100 and 1400, there was only a ban on marriage within the clan which, again, i think was probably the paternal clan (i could be wrong about that though), so theoretically that would’ve left open the possibility of marriage to maternal cousins (who could, like in china, very well have been mostly living in other villages);
– in the 1400s-1500s, marriage to between first and third cousins was finally specifically banned in russia — this is nearly 1000 years after western europe had such a ban (in some parts of western europe anyway), or at least probably 500 years after large parts of western europe.

the length of time that a population has been inbreeding (or outbreeding) is, i think, the key here because we’re talking about the evolution of certain behavioral traits (see this post). one or two generations of cousin marriage or non-cousin marriage is probably not enough to effect much change — we’re talking about long-term processes here — but processes that could’ve happened over the course of 1000 years or so. just not as short as, say, 50 years (probably).

@uncertainty – “Seven or ten generations look like the magic number as there is something like a proverb – the seventh (tenth) water in the kissel – which means that there is hardly any kinship between somebody”

cool! and that’s probably pretty right — when you get out to the seventh generation, you’re really not very related to someone anymore — probably not much more so than to some stranger on the street. it’s a number that pops up quite frequently amongst many peoples — seven generations. like the amhara in ethiopia.

@uncertainty – “Colloquially, cousins are referred as ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ without mentioning their degree of kinship, and there children are referred as ‘nephews’ and ‘nieces’….”

that’s cute. (^_^) also would seem to indicate a sense of being extra close — you’re not just “cousins” with your cousins, but “brothers” and “sisters.” i’m very, very close to one set of my cousins (we were practically all raised together) and their kids refer to me as “aunt.” (^_^)

@uncertainty – “The Balkans are related closely to the Muslims, particularly to Turkey in their culture. I think that their traditions are quite distinct from all other Eastern Europe.”

the south slavsare in the balkans, but i agree — the populations are very mixed up down there — and they do have some pretty unique traditions.

but a strong extended family seems to be present — or was present up until fairly recently — right up and down eastern europe. some of the populations in the balkans, though, are so extreme in their “extended family-ness” that they really have clans or tribes (steven pinker refers to montenegrin tribes in The Better Angels of Our Nature). i’ve got some info on extended families in poland that i must post. i really do think the extended family is/was (until recently) much stronger throughout eastern europe than in western europe, but most strong in the balkans, no doubt about that.

see this page for the coding that you use right before and right after whatever you want to italicize.

you use the letter i at the beginning and /i at the end, but inside the angled brackets (or whatever they’re called!). again, see the example here. (^_^) (i can’t type it directly for you because it just italicizes my sentence then!)